All posts tagged ‘Cretaceous’

Following their most excellent iPad app from 2011, Ansel & Clair’s Adventures in Africa, Cognitive Kid has now come out with a new iPad app, Ansel and Clair: Cretaceous Dinosaurs, as well as adapted their Adventures in Africa app to run on the iPhone. Both of the new apps are also lower in price than the original.

Image; Cognitive Kid

I reviewed the Adventures in Africa iPad app over at Common Sense Media last year, and of all the apps I reviewed there, it was one of the best done and most entertaining for its intended audience. The premise is that two aliens have arrived at Earth and want to learn all about the animals of Africa. They have also lost parts of their spaceship. You help them explore the Nile Valley, Sahara Desert, and Serengeti Plains, and take pictures, learning about animals and nature as you go, and finding their lost spaceship parts. You will see actual photos of wildlife, and learn the related vocabulary. You will also learn about different strategies animals use to survive, such as camouflage, migration, and diet. There are also several games and puzzles. By the time you’re done, you’ve explored several different regions of the continent, and have a better understanding of the wildlife and nature there. You can also have more than one user profile, so all the kids can play without waiting for the previous one to complete the game. It’s great for kids of all ages, because reading isn’t required for most of the functionality. I love this app, and always recommend it to others.

Now Cognitive Kid has converted the original iPad app into an iPhone version. You still get to explore the same areas, you just get to do it on a more portable screen.

My son and I are walking through a dark, jungle, all by ourselves. There’s little sound, other than our footsteps. I stop, having lost track of my son when – all of a sudden – a terrible roar lets loose from close by. I turn and look and towering eight feet above my head, an adult Allosaurus is screaming at me, it’s yellow eye cast in my direction. Of course, there was no need to worry. John Hammond hasn’t extracted dino-DNA from amber-trapped mosquitos — we were catching an early preview of Dinosaurs Unearthed, a traveling exhibition, which presents animatronic dinosaur models that are representative of evidence that some dinosaurs in the Triassic, Jurassic & Cretaceous periods were once covered in feathers.

The exhibition we viewed at Union Station in Kansas City, which is based on fossils found at the excavation located at the Dashanpu Formation near Zigong, China, is one of four exhibitions currently on tour from the Dinosaurs Unearthed company. The Kansas City exhibition is currently the largest, with the newest technology. Each exhibit features similar animatronic dinosaurs, but the exhibit we saw included interactive games, a dig area where kids can try to find dinosaur tracks and the largest collection of feather-related dinosaur fossils outside the Zigong Dinosaur Museum. What’s more, the Union Station exhibit includes a 3-D Dinosaur movie and a Build-A-Dino shop for kids, along with the ubiquitous gift shop. Continue Reading “Feathers and Claws and Fangs … Oh My!” »